Get Into the Icebox
by WritingPurple
Summary: In which cuddling in an ice hotel doesn't quite keep them warm enough, and other means are employed. Sequel of sorts to If You Can't Take the Heat. Clara/Eleven.


In retrospect, maybe an ice hotel wasn't the best idea, either.

Everything up until that point is lovely, though. The ice village is every bit as beautiful as the Doctor had described it on their way there, if not moreso. All the buildings are made entirely of ice, as intricately detailed as any wood or marble she'd seen back on Earth. "It doesn't melt here, it never, ever gets warm enough to melt," the Doctor explains to Clara as they walk hand in hand (well, glove in glove) through the streets. Something to do with some sort of atmospheric disturbance from a meteor storm hundreds of thousands of years ago and the planet being knocked slightly off-kilter – Clara doesn't quite follow the explanation once he gets into some of the more complicated scientific details, but he's so excited she just doesn't have the heart to stop him.

She's relieved to find that the Doctor's usage of the term "snowmen" for the inhabitants is something of a misnomer; she'd been expecting actual, living snowmen, like the ones they'd fought in Victorian London, or like the Ice Lady who had pulled her from the cloud, and there was a part of her that felt panicky at the prospect of facing more. The snowmen of the ice village, though, are humans (or near enough as far as Clara can tell) with skin black as pitch – the Doctor says it makes it easier to absorb light and transform it into heat energy to keep them warm. They all have beards, men and women alike ("like the dwarves in Lord of the Rings!" she says a bit loudly, and the Doctor shushes her, which she thinks is a bit strange; what do people in a galaxy a million billion miles from Earth know of dwarves?), and eyebrows twice as thick as anyone she's ever seen ("maybe they'll share, Doctor"), and are swathed in so much fabric and fur all she can really see is dark faces poking out of bundles. In comparison, she imagined she looks to them like she's horribly underdressed, even bundled as she is in a thick, red woolen coat, with fur lining her hat and gloves and snowboots. She _feels_ a little underdressed, certainly, the cold seeping in enough that she's never properly warm, even when the Doctor throws an arm around her and pulls her close. There's so much to wonder at, though, that she doesn't complain.

They go for dinner and drinks at a little place that reminds her of a pub she had been to with some of her friends from uni on occasion, back when she was still in school. She wonders aloud how the combined body heat of all the people isn't melting the building from the outside in – it isn't exactly what she would call warm inside, but compared to the bitter temperatures outside it's balmy, at least above freezing – and the Doctor goes off on an explanation of some polymer they've developed to coat the insides of buildings. (She starts playing a drinking game with herself with the strange, savory-sweet liquor she has – take a sip every time he says a word she doesn't understand – but she stops when she realizes she'll be smashed within ten minutes if she keeps it up.)

By the end of the day Clara is thoroughly knackered. It's dark by the time the Doctor finally leads her back to the hotel they'd checked into that morning, and the absence of the sun's weak heat combined with the sudden presence of a small breeze is enough that she feels close to frostbite by the time they make it to their room (which is, of course, also made of ice). She strips down to the woolen long johns she's been wearing underneath everything as quickly as she can, leaving the outer layers of her clothing on the ground in a heap, and dives beneath the blankets. Even with the weight of them nearly crushing her, she doesn't feel warm. The Doctor climbs in after her a moment later, having taken a bit longer to get down to his sleepwear, and wraps himself around her.

"Clara? You're shivering," he says, concerned.

"'Course I'm shivering, we're in a room made of ice and it's bloody _cold_," she replies through gritted teeth, trying to burrow into him as much as possible in order to soak up what she can of his body heat. At least the bed isn't made of ice; she counts that as a blessing.

"Is it?" He sounds almost surprised.

"What do you mean, 'is it?'"

"Ah. Right. Maybe should've mentioned. Time Lord biology – temperature extremes don't quite bother me the way they do humans. It's a metabolism thing."

She sighs. "Should've seen that one coming."

"Have you been cold this whole time?" he asks, a note of concern in his voice as he absently strokes her hair.

"Wasn't too bad earlier, when I was all bundled up, but now… I'm sure I'll be fine in a minute, though, once the bed warms up."

The Doctor rubs circles against her back with his palm, the friction leaving a warm spot on her back that feels nice. "Maybe you should move around a bit," he suggests. "You know, get up, do a few jumping jacks, get the blood pumping a bit. Motion is a very effective source of heat."

She smirks into his shoulder. "Motion?"

"Yes, motion; I know you probably are reluctant to get out from under the covers, with good reason, but I really do think thirty seconds or so of vigorous exercise would do you a world of good-"

He cuts off mid-sentence when Clara suddenly pushes him onto his back, clambering atop him with some difficulty given the multitude of blankets weighing her down. "Only thirty seconds? You don't sound very confident in your abilities, Doctor." She raises an eyebrow and he gapes at her in confusion for a moment until she leans in to kiss him. His hands flounder a bit but then go to her waist, the fabric of the top part of her long johns slipping up just enough to allow his warm palms against her skin. (She's glad they're in two pieces; things could get rather complicated otherwise.)

"_Oh_," he says, when she finally breaks the kiss and pulls back just enough to make eye contact. "Yes. This is certainly an option."

"I thought it might be."

The Doctor wraps one arm tightly around her and flips their positions carefully so that he's hovering above her, knees planted between her legs. "Should warm you up better this way," he says by way of explanation, and he's right. It's like having an extra blanket or three, his body helping to trap heat close to her while simultaneously keeping her heat from escaping into the chill of the ice room. She decides against telling him, though. She's rather invested in the motion idea.

To be fair, the Doctor seems to be equally invested, kissing slowly along her jaw, balancing himself on one elbow in order to slide a hand under her top and up along her stomach, leaving her skin tingling where his fingertips brush against it. Pushing her bra out of the way, he finds one nipple and rolls it gently between thumb and forefinger, making her gasp. In retaliation, she grabs his hips, pulls him closer in order to grind against him. He lets out a moan, the sound muffled by the way his lips are pressed to her neck. The relatively thin material of their pyjamas doesn't provide much of a barrier; she can feel him straining against it already. "You were saying something about movement, I believe?" she asks, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from quirking upwards.

"As a matter of fact, I was," he mumbles against her skin, and starts to move against her, slowly, rhythmically; she arches up to meet him with the same rhythm. The steady motion and the friction it causes between her legs makes her fingers tighten reflexively on his hips, nails digging into fabric. With one hand, she tangles fingers in his hair and tugs at it, pulling his head up. His lips leave her neck, coming to rest on hers, kissing her with the same slow, languid pace he's moving with. He runs his tongue along her lips, dips it into her mouth, still slowly, gently, and it would be nice except that between the friction and the kissing and the way he's begun to massage her breast Clara can feel need growing, almost like an ache, and this isn't going to be cutting it for much longer.

"Doctor," she manages to get out, between kisses.

"Mmm?"

"I think your exact words were… vigorous exercise." To drive her point home, she bucks up hard against him, once, twice, three times, setting a much faster pace.

"Yes… vigorous exercise… right… exactly what I said." His phrases are punctuated with barely stifled groans.

"Might want to get on with that."

"Yes," he agrees, and his hand moves from her breast, slipping down the front of her pyjama bottoms and underneath her knickers. She bites back a cry when his fingers brush over her sex, kisses him hard when he presses one finger up inside her. A second follows, sliding in and out as his thumb makes little circles around and around where she's most sensitive, and it's incredible and it makes her shiver in a much different way than she'd been shivering moments before but it's not enough, it's still not enough.

"Doctor," Clara gasps. "Together." Her fingers curl around elastic and she pushes both his pyjama bottoms and his pants down at once. He removes his hand from her in order to facilitate in removing them the rest of the way, and she bites back a whimper at the loss and focuses on wriggling out of her own bottoms. The Doctor kicks the mass of fabric away, somewhere to be swallowed by the blankets, and she's not relishing the thought of having to dig around for them half-naked in the morning but at the moment that's the least of her worries. He settles back in between her legs and she reaches up to grab him, running her hand up and down the length of his cock a few times, enjoying the feel of it and the look on his face while she does it.

Then she's arching up and guiding him down to her, and he pushes inside of her in one move, and almost instantly it's hard and frantic and messy. She clings to him, nails digging crescents into his shoulder blades, legs hooked around his. His face buries in her hair, hand moving back to that spot between her legs, and she can hardly even think or see or breathe. He murmurs her name into her ear, over and over, sometimes coming out in a stutter punctuated by gasps and groans and grunts, until he's too far gone to organize sounds into anything comprehensible. Breath bursts from her lips with every thrust of him into her, heat spreading outward from a central point to the rest of her body, and she squeezes her eyes shut and drags fingernails hard down his back and "Doctor" is just on the tip of her tongue, waiting, almost, _almostalmostalmost_

_there _and the word slips from her mouth as she clenches around him and falls back against the sheets, breathing heavily, and he kisses her open mouth over and over until he comes right after her with a shudder and a cry.

She's pleasantly warm and sleepy in the afterglow, curling into him almost as soon as he rolls off of her. He wraps himself around her, the way he had been holding her in bed on the desert planet, only this time she doesn't feel like she's burning.

"Warm enough now?" he asks into her ear.

"Mmmm," she affirms with a contented yawn.

"Told you," he says, almost smugly. "Vigorous exercise, just the thing. Although I'll have you know, that was definitely longer than thirty seconds-"

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"Hush now. Trying to sleep."

"Oh. Right."

"And Doctor?"

"Hmm?"

"I think you should let me pick the destinations from now on."


End file.
